Saturday, 27 November 2010

Jam Tarts!

when i was a wee girl of around 5 or 6, me and my mum set about making up a folder of recipes for me, and it was a baking project! everytime we made a new thing, we'd copy out the recipe and put it in my folder, so now i have a big chubby folder full of baking recipes. Jam tarts were one of the first recipes we found, and i've made them by myself for almost 10 years, and never gotten bored of them. for the pastry, they are surprisingly easy to make, and are all gone within hours of them coming out of the oven.

i think this is the simplest recipe i've made for a long time! here i've used strawberry and peach jam (homemade of course!) but as you'll se later on, i got a bit adventurous and ended up trying the ginger jam, and having to sneak some blackberry jelly as my dad is verrryyyyy protective of it, which is my favourite :D

i always think you need to have nerves of steel to work with pastry, but this comes together quite easily

i tried to include some of the fruit in each of the tarts, because i'm just that fussy

this made 20 tarts, and as you can see the spiky ones are made up of the scraps of pastry left over - waste not want not!

Ingredients;
(apologies for the quantities in ounces, i have both scales so i dont really need to convert them)
4oz butter
8oz plain flour
pinch of salt
the jam of your choice!

rub the butter into the flour and salt until you get fine breadcrumbed texture.
tip out onto the work surface, and gradually add water, mixing around with a fork, until about half of it sticks together.
slowly and gently, squish the dry parts into the wet parts, and bring it all together into a ball.
put the ball into a plastic bag and leave it in the fridge for about 20 minutes.
roll onto a floured surface with a floured rolling pin until about 1/3cm thick.
cut out circles with a glass or a cookie cutter and place in a cupcake tray.
1/3 fill them with jam and place in the oven at 180degrees for 20 minutes.
when theyre finished, take them out of the tray immediately or the jam will harden and theyll be stuck in there.

WARNING! - when you take them out, the jam will be like lava, so leave them for a while!

eat while the jam is soft and sticky, sprinkled with icing sugar. yums.

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About Me

I'm a first year medical student at a scottish university, currently stumbling my way through life at the bottom of the medical ladder! Follow me on twitter @AndCough, and if you have any questions or thoughts on topics i have talked about, feel free to contact me at and_cough(at)hotmail(dot)com - i love hearing back from you guys!